Trinidad: Popular chef and British national killed by car that mowed down cyclists

(Trinidad Guardian) A fe­male British na­tion­al and a top lo­cal chef have been killed and two oth­ers se­ri­ous­ly in­jured af­ter a car ploughed in­to a group of cy­clists along the Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way ear­ly Sat­ur­day.

The de­ceased were iden­ti­fied as Joan­na Banks, 40, who died at the scene and Joe Brown, a chef at the pop­u­lar Jaf­fa at the Oval restau­rant, who was pro­nounced dead on ar­rival at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex in Mt Hope.

De­tails are sketchy but re­ports sug­gest the fe­male cy­clist may have drowned af­ter she was thrown in­to a ditch at the side of the high­way af­ter a car ran in­to a group of about 14 cy­clists head­ing east op­po­site the Beetham Land­fill.

Beetham res­i­dents who came out to as­sist the crash vic­tims did not ini­tial­ly see Banks, a bpTT em­ploy­ee, be­cause the ditch is al­so full of wa­ter and over­grown with tall grass. In fact, her team­mates were giv­ing most of their at­ten­tion to Brown, who ap­peared to be the most se­ri­ous­ly in­jured, un­til some­one spot­ted her body and two of her team­mates pulled her out of the ditch.

Dri­ver Ju­nior McIn­tyre told po­lice he got a flat tyre, caus­ing him to lose con­trol of his Kia Spec­tra and run off the road­way in­to the cy­clists. One of the cy­clists said he heard a screech­ing noise be­fore the car hit the group and tossed many of them in­to the near­by ditch.

Dr Ajit Ku­ruvil­la and Adeli­no Per­reira were al­so tak­en to hos­pi­tal with in­juries.

The de­ceased were mem­bers of the Slip­stream Cy­cling Club, of Port-of-Spain, who were head­ing out on their usu­al Sat­ur­day morn­ing train­ing ride to east Trinidad af­ter leav­ing the Queen’s Park Oval around 6.15 am.

The ac­ci­dent caused a huge traf­fic pile-up along the east­bound lane of the high­way as the po­lice pre­vent­ed traf­fic from go­ing ahead past the crash site while para­medics at­tend­ed to the in­jured.